Terrific piece. When I think of how ‘we’ improve our society, I always come down to the same answer — how we raise our kids. And that goes directly to your point — once they are ‘cooked’ it’s almost impossible to bring them back. I recommend a book I keep on a shelf of ‘read and reread’ material: “For Your Own Good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence” by Alice Miller (1983), translated from German. She discusses German pedagogy, the destruction of ‘the will’, the obedience to authority and elders, as the model of German child rearing. To cut to the chase: if a society raises generations under this ‘hammer’, they become willing followers seeking only to ‘please’ the authority and the father. I shudder to think of all the kids in America who are being home schooled using this model, anchored to fundamentalist religion.

One clap, two clap, three clap, forty?

By clapping more or less, you can signal to us which stories really stand out.